Brussels Bluetooth Bloodhounding

We love Bluetooth technology as it passively assists us in our everyday needs; but what happens when Bluetooth is turned against us? How do we feel about being bloodhounded by a technology that forms us instead of serving us?

Researchers are using Bluetooth technology to observe the meanderings of tens of thousands of festival-goers at a top European rock festival, hoping their findings will launch a new generation of tracking devices.

The team from the University of Ghent in Belgium believes the research could yield new satellite navigation applications for the retail and security sectors. “We have installed 36 Bluetooth scanners across the site and along a few surrounding roads, as well as bus stops,” the university’s Nico Van de Weghe said on Friday of the project at the Werchter festival, northeast of Brussels this weekend.

Within a radius of 30 meters, the scanners track mobile phones equipped with Bluetooth, a type of short-range wireless technology which allows different devices to connect with one another, often to transfer files.

We are imperiled when an obedient technology is unwittingly set against us.

When our cellphones become trackers instead of memes of communication, we begin to live in tidy fear of the possibilities of two-way communication with a salacious, peeping, and sniping, third eye.

When our technology imprisons us in an unwanted Panopticonic lifestyle — the real threat against the greater good is that many will choose to untether and withdraw and become even more remote instead of being watched in ever hopeful hour — and the danger in that dissection is the very reason for the disconnection: Where are you and what are you doing?